


just a welcome

by hardscrabble



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Community: inceptiversary, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 16:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20085406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardscrabble/pseuds/hardscrabble
Summary: “You’re a bloody mess,” Eames sighs. “Well, metaphorically.”(Arthur's a vampire. Not much else is different, until it is.)





	just a welcome

**Author's Note:**

> for inceptiversary trope bingo 2019, prompt "vampire."
> 
> **Content warning for** description of wounds and wound care. Not gory.

The job’s wrecked. Take a shot.

It’s like jobs _know_ when it’s the worst time for them to go to shit, and they never fail to take the opportunity. Or something. Arthur admits, in the privacy of his own mind while he’s striding through the late-night city streets, that he isn’t at his best right now. What he really needs is somewhere quiet, where he’s guaranteed a welcome, where he can lie low and rest until he’s at a hundred per cent, or at least somewhere above thirty, and that—of _course_ the job that goes to shit is in Milan, so he still has to drive a hundred and forty klicks, at the least, and procuring a car is the _least_ of his problems, and—

Shit. Usually his train of thought doesn’t resemble one of those novelty crazy straws.

He gets a car. It really is easy, because you just know the right people, which Arthur does. Hard not to, after this amount of time in and out of various fields that all call themselves _the business_. This goofy little Fiat Sedici, its proportions just slightly wrong for a station wagon, the precise color of over-steamed string beans. It’s two o’clock in the morning, so he doesn’t have to worry about whether the windows are tinted. He sets the satellite radio to hard rock and alternative metal, sends a text message, and takes off for Turin.

The phone beeps where he stashed it in the cupholder. “Text to voice,” Arthur instructs it.

A little robot voice says, the emphasis all wrong, “Yes but I’LL be gone unTIL morning.”

Which is fine for his purposes.

Usually, during the day, it’s a hundred-minute drive. He makes it in sixty-seven.

The Fiat gets parked in a public lot; he texts another contact to make it their problem. Duffel over his shoulder, he walks the last few blocks to his actual destination. The flat doesn’t look like much of anything, whether it’s night or day. Arthur supposes it might be charming in full sunlight. Terra cotta roof tiles and all that shit. He tries the door: unlocked. And, he sees, decorated with a single Post-It note above the doorknob.

> WELCOME
> 
> —E

It’s a nice gesture, but unnecessary. The text counts as invitation. And Eames always trusts his neighbors too much. Or trusts his own disguise of absentminded-eccentric-artist-type too much. It amounts to the same thing, which is Arthur stepping into the front room of the flat, removing the Post-It note and putting it in his own pocket, and locking the door behind himself. Both locks, tumbler and deadbolt, because there’s no point not being thorough. If Eames was dumb enough to lose his keys and trust his own shitty security, he can knock on his own door. Arthur will hear it, after all.

With one need—space, safe, where he can recover—secured, Arthur takes stock. His bag has the PASIV device, his notebooks, the files he hadn’t been able to pulp, two fresh shirts, a pair of jeans, a sweater, clean socks and underwear, and…that’s about it. His personal inventory isn’t much better. No more than half an hour’s sleep at a stretch in four days, no proper meals in more like six, left hand full of splinters, and desperately in need of a shower.

And he has a sunburn. Face, back of the neck, backs of his hands, and his _ears_.

It _should_ fade, especially if he’s able to eat soon. Even if it doesn’t, he’ll be able to explain it once he gets back to the States. Alps, skiing, snow reflections, whatever. Dom will be pleased he’s _getting out._

Dom doesn’t notice much. Arthur shouldn’t depend on his oversight, but Dom’s been out of extraction for a year now, and they went four or five years before that without incident after—well, after—so it’s reasonable to consider Dom’s well-meaning myopia reliable. Mal knew, but—

God, he’s tired.

Arthur carefully sets the duffel down next to the couch, then hangs his overcoat on the coat tree next to the door. He bends to unlace his boots and lines them up near the radiator so they might dry out. His suit jacket gets draped over the arm of the couch, and his tie over that. He strips off his shirt and realizes that _fuck it_, he is _done_. Splinters be damned; it’s not like he can deal with them without a second set of hands, and Eames will be back before they get dangerous, as opposed to annoying. He manages to get his belt off, because they’re annoying to sleep in, and his slacks off and folded, because they’re wet, before he sacks out on the couch in his boxers.

Before he surrenders to sleep, he shoots off a text: _sleeping on ur couch_. Then he pulls the blanket flung over the back of the sofa right over his face. He hasn’t had a reason to establish whether Eames uses blackout shades. Whatever; the blanket is soft and it smells comfortingly of vetiver and pipe tobacco. _Comfortingly_. Jesus. He gets a pillow situated sort of under his head, and between one breath and the next he’s asleep.

***

Eames is quiet, because he’s not actually a bastard. But not quiet enough, because Arthur’s hearing threshold _is_ a bastard. The light changes noticeably with the click of a switch, so that means it’s either still dark out or the curtains are good enough—not like he’s going to actually fall to ash, but with the existing sunburn— “Hey,” says Arthur, too lazy to move the blanket. From the sound of it, Eames jumps but catches himself on the wall before he actually falls into the coatrack. “Thanks.”

“You’re in one piece?” Eames asks, and Arthur is about to answer in the affirmative when Eames corrects himself. “No, wait, wrong question. Have you got any bits stuck in you that don’t belong?”

Caught out. Arthur sighs; it catches beneath the blanket, a warm puff that reminds him that he _needs_ to brush his teeth, ugh, and he does a full-body wriggle until his face is above the blanket, at least. “Left hand,” he replies, and lets himself pay attention to _how_ it hurts, rather than just that it does. It’s kind of sour, and sort of… dull. Fuzzy, almost. Which is a bizarre contrast with it being from a bunch of inch-long _spikes_, but— “Uh… poplar. I think. So it’s not like it’s—”

Eames sighs as well, gusty and dramatic. “You’ve got to stop coming ’round like this,” he says. “Give it.”

The light filtering through the curtains is weak, pale, too diffuse to form actual beams; Arthur struggles upright, still feeling heavy with tiredness, and holds out his hand. Eames takes it, looking it over clinically, as he says, “Is there _no_ one else in bloody Europe you can—” He stops himself. “Not that I mind,” he continues, far too lightly. “Let me get my kit.”

“It’s not—”

“Shut it.”

Arthur shuts it.

The blanket is still over his right shoulder. He shoves it down, lets it pool in his lap. Arthur sighs and allows his eyes to fall shut again. No, there’s no one in Europe, because Mal’s surviving friends in dreamshare still believe Dom killed her, which Arthur can’t even argue with at its core. Ariadne, hypothetically, but she’s in her third year of her masters’ and in Paris and every time texts from her show up on his phone (he _always_ gives her the numbers) his first hope is leaden in his stomach: _please don’t ask me to put you back in the field—_

Eames appears again from the kitchen, carrying a glass bowl in one hand and a first aid kit in the other. He turns on a desk lamp—targeted LED light, not the kind of table lamp you’d expect for a living room—and sits to Arthur’s left on the couch. “All right,” he says, businesslike. “You’re comfortable?”

“Enough,” Arthur replies.

Because this is far from the first time, Eames just nods, directs the light better, and gets to it with tweezers. Two sets, slant- and needle-tip. The pain of the poplar splinters _leaving_ the flesh of his hand is stranger yet, tinged as it is with relief, his cells’ satisfaction that there’s nothing in the way to prevent their healing now. About half of the difference from humanity, Arthur thinks, is how everything in the vampire body has a fucking opinion.

“How’d this happen?” asks Eames, eyebrows furrowed.

“Chair leg.” Arthur wants to shrug, but he knows if he moves Eames will retaliate and it’ll be this whole thing. “I was on recon. Mark caught on. Paranoid fucker with a sucker phobia.” Eames makes a soft uncertain noise when Arthur says the slur, but otherwise doesn’t react; Arthur ignores it. “Might have had some shit going on with the extractor. Haven’t had time to check—”

“With the _extractor_?” Eames’s hands are steady as bedrock, but his meaning is clear from his tone:_ You’re fucking slipping._

“Yeah, I _know_, okay—”

“The last time you—”

“Was Yusuf, who was _your_—”

“_And_ the sub-sec—”

“And both times,” Arthur says, loud and flat, “I hadn’t eaten in a fucking week. How about that for a fucking—what-you-call-it. Extenuating. Thing.”

Eames doesn’t reply, just extracts another splinter. It’s a forked one; the tug against the flesh of his hand is kind of abstractly sickening. Eames drops it into the glass bowl and carries on, which is as good as an apology.

Fine. He goes on. “So the mark thinks he’s gonna go fucking slayer or something, fucks up one of his kitchen chairs, and _stakes_ me, but he reads the shitty forums, because he goes for my fucking hand.” Arthur almost laughs, remembering the frantic moment after, the play of _got you—wait—why aren’t—oh fuck_ on the mark’s face. “Knocked him out and ran. Warned the chemist. Figured she’d tell the extractor.”

“And then came here.”

“After securing your welcome.”

“Flattered, truly. This one’s going to—” Pain flares in Arthur’s hand; he looks, and the thing between the tweezers is two inches long with, like, four different prongs. “All right. That’s the last. I suppose you’re still a week out from a meal.”

Arthur grimaces. “Uh.”

Eames sets down the tweezers. “You’re a bloody mess,” he sighs. “Well, metaphorically.”

He lifts his hand and looks at it, front and back. The splinters left impressions of themselves, the strata of skin and fat and muscle visible—bone, at one point, which he shouldn’t find interesting. Bloodless as a biology class specimen.

“And you’re _lucky_,” Eames continues, “because I’ve not seen any of you lot since it was you in Tashkent. So there’s steaks in the fridge, but you’ve—” His eyebrows wing upward, which Arthur only registers because he’s suddenly hyperaware. “—Other options,” Eames finishes, “if you’d like.”

That’s not something people _do_, casually.

Just before the Fischer job, Eames had cornered him in Sydney and said, “You are _not_ doing this flight underfed,” and all but shoved his wrist into Arthur’s mouth, which—he couldn’t really argue, right? But that hadn’t been casual; it had been fucking inception, Dom’s life; it had been professional pragmaticism, in the Eames way of things.

And, like, sure, one of Eames’s many and varied income streams is from feeding people like Arthur. Not too frequently, of course, but he’s O-negative and vampires pay better than hospitals. But _if you’d like _isn’t—

Unless he’s just waiting to recite his fee, of course. Which would be an Eames move.

Arthur makes himself blink, and then makes himself scoff. “Euro is pretty strong right now, I guess,” he says.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Eames replies.

“_You’re_ an idiot,” Arthur shoots back, like he’s fucking thirteen, because he’s _not_ at his best. “You can’t just—”

“Which is why I said it’s an _option_, you git.” Eames is standing, just like that. “The curtains in the rest of the house are shite. Got anything with hoods on?”

He blinks again. “Uh. No.”

“Of course not,” Eames mutters. “Wait here.”

***

Twenty minutes later, Arthur’s teeth are brushed and he’s showered, dried, and dressed in clean everything, including a Torino FC hoodie with sleeves too long for his arms. Which is thoughtful more than it is annoying; he pulls the fabric over his fingers before he goes into the kitchen, where Eames is staring at a cup of tea as it steeps. He looks up when Arthur enters, his mouth quirking. “You look like you’re about ten.”

“Could still kick your ass,” Arthur grumbles. “Thanks. Again. For the…” He grabs one of the hoodie drawstrings.

“Not a problem.”

Arthur leans against the counter. There’s no point in wasting time. “Your offer.”

“Still on the table, as it were.”

“You’re, like. Your levels okay?”

“Stellar. As if you wouldn’t know.”

Arthur tips his head back to stare up at the ceiling, but drops his chin almost immediately as the weak sunlight hits his face. It stings, the physical equivalent of getting a whiff of paint thinner. “Access isn’t relevance,” he says. Old, old argument. “When?”

Eames shrugs. “Whenever you’d like; I’ve nowhere to be. I had the feeling sooner would be better than later, considering the—” He gestures to his own face.

Sunburn. It doesn’t look too bad, but it feels like he was sandpapered recently. At least his ears aren’t going to peel. “Now?”

“Might I have my tea?”

He lifts one shoulder and lets it fall. “You can multitask.” He lisps the least bit; his fangs are dropping.

With a roll of his eyes, Eames stands. “Suppose you’re right. C’mon, front room’s got the best light. By which I mean worst.”

Arthur sort of trails after him, a little bewildered. It’s finally settling in his hindbrain that he’s actually going to feed, after far too long—he’d managed two hundred and fifty milliliters of B-positive before Milan, but that’s barely—and—

The other thing about being a vampire is how ditzy he gets when there’s food around. And the other responses. His mouth feels too full. Lights are too bright, sounds a little louder—he feels the texture of the hoodie, his jeans, the knit of the insides of his socks. The loops of yarn feel like cobblestones.

“Have a seat,” Eames says. Arthur does, dumbly, on the couch. Eames flings the blanket he’d slept under out of the way and sits on the middle cushion of the couch, mug of tea in one hand, and then twists so his legs are up on the farthest cushion, his back to Arthur. “Get your arm—there.” He settles his back against Arthur’s side, and then seems to consider. He takes a sip of tea—Assam—and hums. “All right. Just here?” Eames taps his own neck with one finger, over the external jugular. “If that’s comfortable?”

Arthur blinks, angles his head. “Yeah,” he says, voice thick.

“Right. Whenever you’re ready.”

There has to be a catch. But after a moment, Eames just drinks more tea, keeping the side nearest Arthur still, and Arthur watches the vein as he swallows, and—whatever. Fuck catches. He angles his head again and bites. And swallows.

Fuck.

Okay.

Bagged blood is functional; it gets the job done.

Compared to straight from the vein, it’s like—lemonade versus pure cocaine. He imagines. He doesn’t particularly like lemonade, and he’s never done coke. And he doesn’t feed like this often, because the logistics are stupid, but—_shit_.

He doesn’t sag, but he rests his head against Eames’s shoulder, and Eames gives a little satisfied sigh when the venom hits. Venom—the best shorthand for something that isn’t venomous at all, if you’re not a dick, and Arthur isn’t. Alkaloids and hormones, oxytocin and a morphine relative and something that acts like a muscle relaxer. Yusuf could probably deliver a three-hour lecture on it. If he pays attention, which he does, he can feel the tissues of his left hand getting with the program, knitting together. The skin on his cheeks, the backs of his hands tightens and relaxes, cools—fuck that sunburn.

He’s counting, in the back of his head. Lethal loss is two liters; Eames can comfortably lose about seven hundred mils; vampire drain rate is about a mil a second; Arthur will be satisfied with three hundred but better with five, so—

After six minutes he pulls back. “You good?”

Eames blinks at him slowly, tea still in hand but apparently forgotten. “You’re the politest bloody creature. And not done.”

“Drink your tea first.”

“Fair enough. You’ll come for dinner tonight?”

Arthur lets himself smile. “Owe you.”

Eames sort of shrugs and downs the rest of his tea. “Finish up,” he says.

“Bossy.” Arthur bites, counts. _Jesus_, it’s good. Eames is heavy, loose-limbed. When Arthur’s count hits two hundred and he tongues over his own fangs to put them away, licks at the wound until it’s stopped dripping, he feels similar. A little dazed. Comfortable. “Lie down?” he suggests.

“Brilliant,” Eames murmurs.

It’s a close fit, but Eames seems content, and Arthur isn’t going to complain. In the first couple hours after a meal, especially a freely given one, the vampire body does its thing and tells the human-ish brain to get out of the way. It’s busy sending all those nutrients to do their shit and telling the brain to just calm down, everything’s handled. And all those alkaloids are doing their job in Eames’s head, telling him he’s safe and sound and cozy, with a little sedation, a little euphoria alongside—not to mention the blood loss, although Arthur was _careful_. He settles with his arm looped over Eames’s waist, but before Arthur closes his eyes, Eames drags the blanket back over them both. Vetiver and pipe tobacco. Assam tea and clean laundry and Eames, who smells a little like salt. It’s— “Good,” Arthur says, and sinks into sleep.

***

He wakes when it’s much darker, because Eames has just kissed his nose.

“What,” says Arthur, blinking. That’s not—part of it. Or part of them.

It could be, he thinks, but.

He feels—pretty awesome. Hand back to normal, skin cool and comfortable, energy available but quiescent. And outside his own skin there’s the soft blanket and Eames, still smelling of salt, his nose an inch from Arthur’s, his eyes level and clear.

“Felt like it,” says Eames. “Not the chemicals, darling; you know better.”

“Do I?”

“I _swear,_ all the fiction in the world wouldn’t know what to do with _you_ besmirching the vampirical reputation,” Eames replies. His tone is light, amused; his eyes are—soft. “You’re all supposed to be these louche hedonistic piles of affectation and sadistic impulses, all these mannered rituals and cravats and— But no, there’s Arthur, fangs exactly ten millimeters and not a jot longer, securing welcomes via text message, sending his own spit for chemical analysis so he might—”

“I’m being responsible,” Arthur says. “Think you’ve heard of the concept.” Of _course _he’d had one of the chemists back in the States analyze his venom, quietly, once he’d been turned, passed over as a sample of something unlabeled he’d found in a lab during intel. He was curious, and it’s dumb to wonder about a solvable question.

“You are,” says Eames, fond. “Your maintained sense of self is one of the strongest arguments one could make for the humanity of a turned vampire.”

“That’s a compliment.”

“Might be, at that.”

He blinks. It’s dumb to wonder about solvable questions. “And you kissed my nose because—”

“I wanted to. It’s quite a good nose.”

He leans forward—it’s barely a stretch—and presses his lips to the corner of Eames’s mouth. Eames turns his head and meets him, and it’s—he lets his eyes fall shut. Gentle, soft. The slight sound as Eames inhales through his nose, his grip on Arthur’s arm tightening fractionally. Arthur touches his tongue to Eames’s bottom lip, just once, feeling it give, and kisses him again, close-mouthed.

There’s no need to rush. None at all.

After a moment, Arthur pulls back and opens his eyes. “Louche and hedonistic, huh?”

Eames is smiling. “You might have to take me to dinner first, before you come over all stereotypical.”

“Said I would.”

“And my heart sings to know it, darling.”


End file.
